SYNCHRONOUSThere are many synchronous tools related to computer-mediated exchanges, but for our purposes here, we will focus on the ones shown below.

Instant Message (IM) - chats**

Cell (smart) phones**

SKYPE - with or without webcams**

Instant Messaging. Instant Messaging (IM) is more 'in the now' than email. According to a 2010 Pew Inernet Teens and Mobile Phones Survey, text messaging has become the most frequent way that teens reach their friends, surpassing face-to-face meetings, email, instant messaging and voice calling as a daily communicationsand considered the preferred mode for today's youth. For this topic, we are going to look at email, even though older students consider this passe! Read this article: How How Will Students Communidate? (Jan. 2011)

Also see this article about India's young people's preference for texting (May 2011). Too much texting results in loss of sleep, according to a recent article (May 2011). According to a source from Spain (May 2011), "Our world is being remade by the computer programs that let us talk to each other. The numbers are massive, with the incomprehensibility of cosmic distances or national budgets. 190 million tweeters, 500 million Facebook users, probably a billion using instant messaging and around 1.5 billion humans with e-mail addresses—all technologies relatively few knew or cared about before the past decade." And here's a video (3 min 44 seconds) that gives you the general information about Instant Messaging (IM). And here's a great resource from Public Broadcasting (PBS) for parents that shows the IM vocabulary (glossary) they will need in order to be 'in' on IM with their youngsters!

Cell Phones (SmartPhones). For this topic's focus on synchronous tools that are computer-mediated, the obvious one is cell phone or more accurately a SmartPhone. And we all know that cell phones and iPhones or Blackberries are part of the 'uniform' of today's youngsters in many parts of the world. Actually many if not all of them seem to have Smart Phones - see the definition for Smart Phone And look at this article on how middle school students and their teachers are using SmartPhones in their classroom learning activities (Mar 2010).

We are all pretty familiar with the idea of connectin with our families and friends via SKYPE, but embedded in some of the articles above are even more interesting ideas, such as the shared holiday dinner. And there are long-distance romantic relationships nurtured by SKYPE, such as in this NYTimes article, though in there they do report a fondness for 'real letters'! There are even stories of young people who 'date' via SKYPE; they each put on the same movie and sit, cameras turned on each of them, so they can watch the movie and also see each other, as if they were sitting on the couch together watching the movie! Read Love in the Age of SKYPE.